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Parlour games

The cinetrix is an inveterate Entertainment Weekly reader. She blames her addiction on the loooooong slow shifts she used to fill reading it when she worked at a video store. [It's bad: I have a crush on Dalton Ross and everything.]

What's my reason for making this confession? Well, last week, a reader submitted a question to "Ask the Critic" that either Seaghan or I might have come up with on any one of a hundred hungover Sunday morning shifts in between iced coffee runs.

What song on the radio makes you cringe, but in the right scene in the right film it somehow works?

Owen Gleiberman: "All Out Of Love" by Air Supply. When Philip Seymour Hoffman and Camryn Manheim slow dance to it in Happiness, it's geeks-in-love heaven.

God, the cinetrix hated that movie with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns, but she can't fault Gleiberman's answer. The first song that came to mind for me was "Sister Christian" by Night Ranger, as the soundtrack to Alfred Molina's beatdown in Boogie Nights, but surely I'm forgetting plenty more. Back when I worked in the trenches, we could have filled hours this way, polling the stray favorite customer, etc. Now I can simply await your comments. Plus, no late fees! I love the interweb.

There's also the flip side. Is there a perfectly fine song that has been transfigured and made transcendent for you because of how it was used in a movie? I can quickly rattle off three: "Love Train" by the O'Jays in The Last Days of Disco, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" by Otis Redding in Heaven Help Us, and "California Dreaming" by the Mamas and the Papas in Chungking Express.

Have at it.

Elvis: That's the way it is

OK, the cinetrix can sum up her day with one word: sucktastic. The news that Elvis Mitchell has been kicked to the curb by the Times just caps it. Gawker called it, and here's Variety's take.

Inside Move: Elvis to leave building
Times toplines Scott as chief film critic

By PAMELA MCCLINTOCK

In another shakeup for the New York Time's culture pages, A.O. Scott will ascend to Janet Maslin's former post and soon be named chief movie critic, while film reviewer Elvis Mitchell is expected to depart the Gray Lady altogether.
Move downsizes the triumvirate that put Scott, Mitchell and Stephen Holden in charge of movie criticism when longstanding lead reviewer Maslin stepped down at the end of 1999.

The Times declined any comment on the matter.

There have been longtime rumblings of dissatisfaction at the Times with Mitchell, who was even rumored at one point last year to be among those under consideration to run the nascent Warner Independent Pictures.

Mitchell, who cultivates a dude-about-town image, apparently irked some at the paper with his numerous outside activities, such as recently hosting Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray events. Mitchell also is a visiting lecturer at Harvard U.'s African and African American Studies Dept.

There's some speculation that Mitchell has already turned in his resignation. He could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Oh, and Variety? If you ever expect me to pay for a subscription, you're gonna have to proofread. New York Time's?

Oh, I have so many names...

With the release of Van Helsing lurking around the corner, today's Wall Street Journal [paid subscription required] takes a look at the many names borne by Dracula's nemesis.

Usually the vampire gets top billing. But when Universal decided to retell the "Dracula" legend this summer for the popcorn crowd, it named the movie "Van Helsing," after the vampire's legendary nemesis, Abraham Van Helsing.

But wait: Make that Gabriel Van Helsing. In the release set to open May 7, the studio and producers decided to change the first name of a character that traces its lineage back to Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula."

So what's wrong with the name Abraham? And why pick Gabriel over, say, Brian? Writer and director Stephen Sommers, who couldn't be reached for comment, says in the studio's production notes: "I needed to find a way to make [Van Helsing] my own.... I made him younger and cooler... in a sense, I made my Van Helsing the younger brother to Stoker's character."

[Is anyone else reminded of the Simpsons episode where Otto was looking for a book from the point of view of the vampire?]

Who will play Cayce Pollard?

A quick item from the Guardian.

Peter Weir, who earned a best director Oscar nomination this year for his seafaring adventure Master and Commander, is in talks to direct the thriller Pattern Recognition. Variety says the story is based on a novel by William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer and godfather of cyberpunk, and centres on a marketing expert who becomes ensnared in an internet investigation.

Wonder whether Michelin will be angling for product placement?

Russ Kick is a hero

The cinetrix is all about the power of images. Which is why this Times story made her heart leap up and sink at the same time: Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken. She never liked living in a country where the government could cynically stage-manage Top Gun photo-ops yet keep photographs of the real cost of war out of the public eye. This ain't the movies. Freedom: still not free.

A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in December found that 62 percent of Americans said the public should be allowed to see pictures of the military honor guard receiving the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq as they are returned to the United States. Twenty-seven percent said the public should not be.

Mr. Kick, who operates his Web site from Tucson, describes himself as "an information archaeologist." He did not respond to phone calls to his home last night. But on his Web site, he said he had filed a request for "all photographs showing caskets containing the remains of U.S. military personnel at Dover A.F.B."

After an initial rejection, Mr. Kick said, he appealed on several grounds "and to my amazement the ruling was reversed." The request was granted by the Air Mobility Command, and the pictures of coffins on planes and at funeral services for slain servicemen were made available to him.

The Pentagon said the pictures had been taken for historical purposes. Lt. Col. Jennifer Cassidy, an Air Force spokeswoman, said at a briefing yesterday that the release had violated the Pentagon's rules and that no further copies of the pictures would be distributed.

Whatever your own leanings, I suggest a respectful moment of silence for the soldiers' families.

This film is unrated.

Maybe he's on to us. Elvis Mitchell reviews not one, but two, unrated films this week. Fortunately, all is not lost: He also drew the Garner straw.

The film "13 Going on 30" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has hints of adult sexuality, alcohol consumption and strong language, which will alienate neither end of the age range in its title.

Comme dit on en Francais, "Learn to fuckin' type"?

Yes, yes, the cinetrix has until now said nothing about Quentin Tarantino, Cannes jury head. I was just biding my time, and now my patience has been rewarded: Labor Protests Threaten Cannes. Tout le monde waits with baited breath to see whether the man responsible for such memorable dialogue about tipping etiquette, the same man who did his time as an hourly wage counter jockey at Video Archives, will cross a picket line on the boardwalk. OK, maybe not. But it's more interesting than this year's list of films in competition.

For those not familiar with the particulars of this labor action, let's just say that it's pretty French. How French? Decide for yourselves.

The protesters want to revoke an agreement, reached in June by three unions and the national employers' association in France, that reduces unemployment benefits for about 100,000 self-employed artists and technicians. The employers said that an earlier agreement was being widely abused and cost them $1 billion a year. Two leftist unions, which refused to sign the deal, have been leading the protests. Before the June agreement, if employees worked 507 hours during a 12-month period they were guaranteed 12 months of unemployment benefits. Now they must work 507 hours in 11 months to earn 8 months of unemployment benefits.

I'm going to let Monsieur Rose field this one.

MR. PINK
I got two words for that: "Learn to fuckin' type." Cause if you're expecting me to help out with the rent, you're in for a big fuckin' surprise.

They're gonna put me in the movies

The cinetrix knows that by virtue of asking why something ran in the New York Observer, in a way her question is always already moot. Still, a Netflix article, in April 2004? How freakin' cutting edge. But, see, New Yorkers are all competitive and neurotic about adding Netflix to their busy, solipsistic lives.

What a hook. Between this and the Times food section breaking down self-serve scanning at the market, it's time to cue the Buck Owens here at cinetrix HQ.

In the mental iconography of the New York culture junkie, the Netflix queue has joined the line of must-have life accouterments. The kind of person who fixates on arranging just the right titles on his built-in bookcases or artfully stacking back issues of Granta and The New York Review of Books now spends countless hours searching the Netflix Web site. His Netflix neuroses requires him to add to his queue all the high-end movies that he never got around to catching at the theater—if not necessarily to watch them.

[snip]

For Elaine Chen, an ad copywriter at Wunderman, though, the problem is more mundane: When a friend at work suggested she add Netflix to her already overloaded entertainment smorgasbord, the thought made her cringe. "We all basically have a bottom-line amount of information we can handle, so I thought, ‘I can’t be spending any more money on this crap than I already am,’" Ms. Chen said. "If I already have a cable bill, you throw in my Internet and my TiVo, it’s $100 a month!’ So I’m like, ‘If I pay another 20 bucks for Netflix, I’ll just feel like I’m an asshole.’ It’s particularly bad because I really have an extremely frightening home theater system for a single woman. At some point, I really need a reason to leave the house."

[snip]

For now, though, there’s a weirdly, mutually profitable match between New Yorkers and their Netflix subscriptions. "The interesting thing about Netflix: It brings to entertainment some of the appeal of getting something accomplished," as Mr. Levine put it. "Like when I’m compelled to watch my Netflixes and mail them back and feel good about that. I shouldn’t, though. It’s not an achievement. It’s a freaking movie."

Yes, it's good that you did that. And I'm guessing the home theatre system is not the only reason Elaine doesn't leave the house.

Yay! Group hug! [roll credits]

Dead to rights

OK, what isn't wrong with this introductory paragraph on the welcome page at cinemorgue?

On several movie-related sites (and among my circle of friends), I've noticed one question that pops up surprisingly often: "Has so-and-so ever gotten killed in any movies?" This site will attempt to answer that question for most of the "so-and-so's" that question's been asked about.

From the index below, click on the performers' names to see a list of movies in which they died, with a brief description of the death scene. I'm trying to include the famous and the obscure alike, so if you're not familiar with an actress, you can view a list of her credits by clicking on her name on her page.

Obviously, since this site reveals who dies in which movies (plus, in many cases, the killer's identity), the entire site is one huge SPOILER. You've been warned...

We found this link via New Yorkish; we would prefer not to learn how they found it. The cinetrix is given to nightmares as it is.

Films That Do Not Exist

The cinetrix was casting about for inspiration, which is to say she was looking for new and different venues in which she and the Fesser could get Uncle Grambo drunk tonight while he's taking care of business in Boston. Things are still DEVELOPING on that front, but cinetrix stalkers should seek me in Somerville next Friday night.

So often, things are not what they seem. Jed Speare of the Mobius Artists Group examines that idea in a multimedia exhibition, "Films That Do Not Exist," that will open at Brickbottom Gallery next Friday. Art by Matthew Briggs, Eirene Efstathiou, Adaleta Maslo-Krkovic, Andrew Neumann, Amruta Patil, and Speare himself will explore ideas generated by a broad range of cinematic experiences, like grainy home movies, smoky film noir, cheesy ’70s b-movies, and "objective" documentaries. These artists aim to drag that singular experience of sitting in the dark in front of big flickering images into the bright light of the art gallery.

"Films That Do Not Exist" is at Brickbottom Gallery, 1 Fitchburg Street in Somerville, April 30 through May 28, with an opening reception on April 30 from 6 to 8 p.m.; call (617) 776-3410. [via the Boston Phoenix]